SilasBarta comments on Open Thread June 2010, Part 2 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: komponisto 07 June 2010 08:37AM

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Comment author: SilasBarta 14 June 2010 02:43:38AM *  3 points [-]

I'm familiar with this: entanglement between the environment and the quantum system affects the outcome, but nature doesn't have a special law that distinguishes human entanglement from non-human entanglement (as far as we know, given Occam's Razor, etc.), which the alternate hypothesis would require.

The error that early quantum scientists made was in failing to recognize that it was the entanglement with their measuring devices that affected the outcome, not their immaterial "conscious knowledge". As EY wrote somewhere, they asked,

"The outcome changes when I know something about system -- what difference should that make?"

when they should have asked,

"The outcome changes when I establish more mutual information with the system -- what different should that make?"

In any case, detection of vibration does not require sensitivity to quantum-specific effects.